AG: Then a similar thing to Shelley was a very great poet at this particular colossal rhyme, the colossal breath, heroic or colossal breath, I guess, is Adonais (do folks know that? Adonais? – how many have read through Adonais? – how many have not? – Adonais – well, that’s a great one. That’s his elegy on the death of poor old John Keats, (it’s on (page) 685, well the verses I want are on 685). That’s really best… You notice it begins on page … Read More

AG: “Sunday Walks in the Suburbs” [by Charles Reznikoff] – “(2) – Scared dogs looking backwards with patient eyes – /at windows stooping old women, wrapped in shawls./ old men, wrinkled as knuckles, on the stoops” – (Okay, so if he’s going to get poetic, he’s going to get very realistically poetic – “wrinkled as knuckles”. If he’s going to make a simile, it’s going to be a really totally close-to-the-bone simile – “wrinkled as knuckles”)
Student: If you.. If you read the book, you can just look at your knuckles … Read More

Allen Ginsberg’s 1978 lectures on Meditation and Poetics at Naropa resume with this July 24th, 1978 class
AG: I wanted to start off on (Charles) Reznikoff today. How many here have read Charles Reznikoff? Just since this term or before? How many have read it before? [to Student] Where’d you get to read Reznikoff ? (I forgot your name).
Student: Where?
AG: Yeah
Student: In libraries.
AG: Where?

Student: And bookstores. New York.
AG: How come?
Student: Because I try to read all I can.
AG: What led you on to him?
Student: Interest. And I try to read … Read More

Today is T.S. Eliot’s birthday – In ’58 Allen made him an honorary “Ignu” (“Eliot probably an ignu one of the few who’s funny when he eats”) – and three years later, in “Journal Night Thoughts” – “Eliot’s voice clanging over the sky/ on upper Broadway, “Only thru Time is Time conquered”